WiFi network performance is an important factor in environments with high numbers of users (e.g., devices), such as hotspots in public venues. Efficient use of available spectrum and better management of interference in a WiFi environment may improve WiFi performance. In order to address the issue of increasing bandwidth requirements for wireless communications systems, different schemes may be employed to allow multiple user devices to communicate with a single access point by sharing the channel resources while achieving high data throughputs. Multiple Input or Multiple Output (MIMO) technology is one such scheme that has emerged for wireless communication systems. MIMO technology has been adopted in several emerging wireless communications standards such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard.
One way to leverage MIMO technology to improve efficient use of available spectrum and improve management of wireless interference is to reduce the number of signals (overhead), and therefore bandwidth, used by a wireless device to send data. Most wireless devices that use MIMO technology require a base station (e.g., a wireless Access Point (AP) that connects the wireless devices to the Internet). For example, one or more users (e.g., family members) may be using one or more wireless devices, to access the Internet via one or more wireless routers (base stations) within their villa. Existing MIMO technology requires each of the one or more wireless devices to request bandwidth allocation and stream allocation information from the base station. The base station in turn encodes a packet with bandwidth allocation, stream allocation, modulation coding scheme (MCS), and wireless device ID (e.g., Partial Access ID (PAID)) data. However the bandwidth allocation and stream allocation data may be encoded in the packet as many times as there are wireless devices. However this information does not need to be encoded multiple times. Not only does this increase the overhead and therefore the bandwidth needed to send allocation information (i.e., bandwidth and stream allocation information), but it also increases the chances that the information will unsuccessfully be delivered to the wireless devices. This follows because increasing the number of bits sent increases the chance (i.e., probability) that a packet may be corrupted. Successful delivery of the information is especially important in environments that are prone to wireless interference. To combat both of these potentially problematic issues, the bandwidth and stream allocation information for all wireless devices may be encoded once in a portion of a header of a physical layer frame and broadcast to all wireless devices. By encoding this information in a portion of a header of a physical layer frame, the chances that the data message will be corrupted by interference, may be decreased, and the overhead required to send bandwidth and stream allocation information to the wireless devices may decrease also. This follows because the bandwidth allocation and stream allocation data will not be encoded multiple times, but rather encoded once in a portion of a physical layer frame, and then broadcast to all of the wireless devices.
The systems and methods disclosed herein may encode bandwidth and stream allocation information into a portion of a header of a physical layer frame to decrease overhead and the number of packets (packet error rate) corrupted/dropped due to interference.